Richard Dawkins: The God DelusionHighly recommended. Despite what you might have heard, Richard Dawkins does not spew venom in this book. Flames do not shoot out when you open it, nor does bile drip from the pages. Far from being an hysterical, rabid diatribe against religion, it is a quite measured, logical explanation of the evidence against God and why religion should not be treated with such reverence. (*****)

Daniel C. Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural PhenomenonI highly recommend this book for anyone who is about to embark on studying religion and atheism. Why do people enjoy music? Why do we like to socialize? Why do we sometimes become violent? Science has attempted to answer each of these questions. Dennett proposes that science attempt to answer another: Why are people religious? Even if one of the religions is true, that still means that billions of people believe religions that are not true. Why? What is it about our evolutionary past that makes us willing to believe? (*****)

Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack S. Cohen: The Science of DiscworldYou'll have to visit Amazon UK to locate this one. This book explains science concepts by comparing them to the decidedly different physical laws of the Discworld series. (****)

December 31, 2006

Saddam Execution Conspiracy Theories

Well that didn't take long. Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging, but full video of the entire process isn't available yet, therefore... it's a conspiracy! Saddam isn't really dead! The entire thing was faked!

Or so goes the claim of at least one web site (and I suspect others). The motivation, this site claims, is that a living Saddam Hussein could then contact the Sunni insurgents and tell them to stop their attacks. Saddam would agree to do this because, after stability in Iraq is achieved, the US could launch an attack on Iran, which Saddam also wants. (Why do they have to pretend to kill Saddam at all? This isn't really explained clearly, but I guess it's to appease the Shiites and Kurds.)

The entire evidence for this claim is the fact that full video of the hanging wasn't available immediately on the Internet. I suspect that full video being made available still wouldn't stop the conspiracy theories. After all, videos can be faked. For that matter, even hangings can be faked -- just ask Penn and Teller. I expected "Saddam is not dead" conspiracy theories; I just expected them to come from Muslims in the Middle East, not from some guy in Italy.